This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Agile Buzz by James Robertson. Original Post: Conference todos Feed Title: Cincom Smalltalk Blog - Smalltalk with Rants Feed URL: http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/rssBlog/rssBlogView.xml Feed Description: James Robertson comments on Cincom Smalltalk, the Smalltalk development community, and IT trends and issues in general. Latest Agile Buzz Posts Latest Agile Buzz Posts by James Robertson Latest Posts From Cincom Smalltalk Blog - Smalltalk with Rants

Allen Holub has an interesting article in the latest SDNews. He's charting the decline of JavaOne as a conference. Now, this doesn't actually have anything to do with Java itself - it has to do with the conference and how it's run. Allen says that the early shows were educational affairs - he ralates an experience in an AWT class at an early JavaOne:

I vividly remember a session on the Abstract Window Toolkit (AWT), for example, where the speaker analyzed the library in terms of the implemented design patterns and showed how the APIs fit into those patterns. The APIs were put into a context that allowed me to understand the whole library, including those APIs that were not discussed during this session. The talk, which didn 19t follow a rigid format, was packed with information. I came out of this session thoroughly understanding AWT and its architecture, and could immediately apply what I 19d learned.

He contrasts that with this year's show, where he found too much (Sun) marketing and too little technical information. So why do I care? Well, I'm one of the people involved in getting Smalltalk Solutions off the ground each year (although not nearly as much as Alan Knight, who is the technical chair, or Joy Murray, who does the most of the work around site selection). One of the things I hope we do a good job of is the talks at the show - do attendees find them useful and interesting? Do you learn new things?

Certainly there's a place for marketing and advocacy at this type of show, but interesting and useful content is what makes the rest of it possible. So how are we doing that way? Do we do a better job than shows like JavaONE? A similar job? A worse job? Let me know.